Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh made a bold statement on his program about Steve Bannon and the current state of the Republican Part y.

Limbaugh believes Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, is taking over the roles and responsibilities meant for GOP leadership by enforcing conservatism onto Republican candidates up for re-election.

“I think what Bannon is doing is slowly but surely taking over the role of the Republican Party,” Limbaugh said Wednesday. “The Republican Party is obviously not with Trump on balance — you have some in the House who are — but the Republican Party on balance is not with Trump.”

Steve Bannon played a major role in then-candidate Donald Trump’s presidential victory upset last year and led the formulation of White House policy in the months that followed. He was Trump’s campaign chairman during the 2016 election and later served as a White House chief strategist — leading the nationalist wing of the administration.

After abruptly leaving the administration in mid-August, Bannon returned to his prior position as executive chairman of Breitbart News. Since leaving the White House, he made it clear he would use his position as a media executive to support insurgent conservative candidates running primaries against establishment GOP lawmakers.

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Bannon already appears good for his word.

In the special election in Alabama to fill the Senate seat once held by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Bannon went against the Trump administration with his endorsement of Roy Moore. Bannon supported the successful candidacy of Moore, a controversial former judge, in a move that was at odds with Trump, who campaigned vehemently for Moore’s opponent, Sen. Luther Strange. By election day, it wasn’t even close. Moore bested Strange in the GOP primary by almost double digits. Moore now heads into the Alabama general election, where he will likely win in a state that leans red.

The primary results demonstrated the power of Bannon’s support.

The leader of Breitbart is not stopping with the Alabama special election. Bannon has recently announced he is expanding his GOP targets, adding Republican Sens. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, John Barrasso of Wyoming and Orrin Hatch of Utah to his hit list.

> In Utah, Hatch may very well retire on his own. If he does, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is reportedly eyeing a run in the Mormon-majority state. If that happens, Bannon is ready to run a candidate against him.

According to a source close to Bannon, this is just a “partial” list of elections he is looking to influence.

Bannon is already working to knock off Republican Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and his beleaguered campaign for re-election. Nevada Sen. Dean Heller and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker are also on Bannon’s radar.

“Some people make an argument that there really isn’t a Republican Party left. I mean, there are people who call themselves that and they go out and raise money and they raise a lot. But whereas the party used to be known for one, two, or three very serious things, they’re not anymore,”Limbaugh added on his radio show.

The conservative talk radio host believes Bannon and others are trying to keep the identity of the Republican Party alive by enforcing such standards onto them by way of primary challenges.

The long arm of government regulation has grown considerably shorter in the first months of the Trump administration. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said regulatory reform is intended to address “that slow cancer that can come from regulatory burdens that we put on our people.”

Federal agencies have withdrawn 469 regulations that had been proposed by the Obama administration last fall, according to information from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. That total included 19 regulations with an economic impact of $100 million or more,the White House said.

The White House said 391 regulations have been delayed for further evaluation and consideration.

According to the White House, during the final five months of fiscal 2016, the Obama administration put in place rules that imposed $6.8 billion in annual costs on the economy. The White House said rules imposed in the Trump administration’s first five months have imposed no costs.

“It’s really the beginning of a kind of fundamental regulatory reform,”Neomi Rao, head of the office, said Wednesday.

Some Trump administration rules are devoted to killing other rules. For example, the Interior Department plans to reduce the paperwork burden for outdoorsmen, fish restoration programs and Native American tribes, while the Labor Department wants to change the approval process for new apprenticeship programs.

“There is a substantial withdrawal and rollback of proposed regulatory actions,”Rao said. “It is also important to note that what we are doing now is in some ways fulfilling a number of longstanding principles that other presidents have always talked about.”

Trump’s approach to regulations has been cheered by business.

“We just got through eight years of a regulatory onslaught, aimed at curtailing oil and gas production. So we are very supportive of the administration’s efforts to roll back regulation,”said Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas drillers in Western states.

Rao noted that while reducing regulations is a major goal of the Trump administration, it cannot be done instantly.

“Deregulation is going to take time,”she said. “It is not something you can just do at the snap of a finger.”

“Agencies want to move quickly to get things done, to fulfill their priorities,”she said, adding that her office would be working with agencies to be sure they follow the law and are “doing things the right way.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. President Donald Trump, unimpressed by the Afghanistan war options presented to him during a White House meeting with his full national security team Wednesday, suggested they may have to go back to the drawing board to craft a strategy that does not mirror the failed ones employed by his predecessors, said an administration official.

The meeting came as the Pentagon briefed lawmakers about plans to increase the U.S. military footprint in the country.

Contrary to mainstream media claims that the president has taken a completely hands-off approach to the 16-year-old conflict in Afghanistan, Trump presided over Wednesday’s meeting primarily aimed at discussing the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, a Trump administration official familiar with the deliberations told Breitbart News on condition of anonymity.

President Trump indicated that he is not satisfied with the strategy as it currently stands.

The Pentagon and White House National Security Council (NSC) declined to provide specifics about the developing plan.

President Trump demanded that his team go back to square one if necessary and create a realistic plan that ensures Afghanistan is ultimately able to stand on its own as a country, said the administration official, noting that the meeting served as a sort of wake up call for those involved in developing the strategy.

It appears that besides the Pentagon, the NSC has at least some authority in setting the strategy.

Asked about the meeting, the Pentagon did not confirm nor deny that the President asked officials to go back to the drawing board.

“We’re not going to discuss White House meetings or direction,”said Adam Stump, a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) spokesman, when Breitbart News asked whether or not it has been forced to start developing the Afghanistan war strategy from scratch and when it expects to present the plan to Trump.

The NSC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters last Friday a decision on the new plan would be unveiled around “mid-July” or “somewhere around there. We are driven by the maturity of the discussion, and where we’re at, we are not going to meet some timeline if we are not ready, but we are pretty close.”

Trump has granted the Pentagon the authority to decide how many additional troops to deploy to the war-ravaged country. Currently, Mattis may increase that number of troops by between 3,000 and 5,000, from the 8,400 already there. Mattis noted on Friday that the number of additional troops has not been “finalized yet,” adding that the Pentagon is waiting from input from the U.S. State Department.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, CNN reports that as it currently stands, the strategy:

Encompasses a way ahead in Afghanistan, including the possibility of sending more troops, but also a look at new ideas for dealing with Pakistan, which the US believes is supporting or turning a blind eye to a number of terror groups operating inside the country.

The president made it clear he is not interested in any approach that resembles the strategies used by his predecessors and will not accept anything less than a dramatic overhaul, the official told Breitbart News.

Directly dealing with Pakistan’s support for terrorists fighting the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan would mark a significant departure from what America has done in the past.

Most of the 2,255 U.S. military fatalities and 20,245 injury incidents have taken place in provinces that border Pakistan.

The Pentagon spokesman defined what victory in Afghanistan means for the Trump administration, saying it ultimately involves a settlement with the Taliban and terrorists laying down their arms.

Stump told Breitbart News:

The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan remains centered on working with NATO allies, operational partners, and the international community to defeat the remnants of core al Qaeda and to defeat other violent extremist organizations and terrorist groups, such as ISIS-K [Islamic State], to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a safe-haven for groups to plan and execute attacks against the United States, U.S. persons overseas, or allies and partners; and continuing efforts to provide financial and advisory support to the Afghan Government and to enable a well-trained, equipped, and sustainable ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Force] that provides security in Afghanistan.

The U.S. and Afghan Governments agree that the best way to ensure lasting peace and security in Afghanistan is through reconciliation and a political settlement with the Taliban. The United States supports an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned reconciliation process and supports any process that includes violent extremist groups laying down their arms.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the Washington Post (WaPo)reports that the current U.S.-Afghan war is framed around a four-year plan to degrade the Taliban this is unlikely to “yield significant results until its later stages.”

In recently issued reports, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon have accused Pakistan of willingly serving as a safe-haven for the Taliban and its affiliates, including the deadly Haqqani Network.

For much of the past few weeks, the White House has been holding the daily media briefing off-camera with only audio recording permitted, ostensibly to counter the agenda-driven, play-for-the-cameras showboating that has been exhibited by some members of the White House media pool.

But CNN’s top White House correspondent Jim Acosta, who has a history of hamming it up at media briefings, has not been pleased with the new arrangement, and he let press secretary Sean Spicer know it on Monday, repeatedly and quite loudly, according to Business Insider.

Acosta was not called on but shouted a question anyway regarding the Republican health care bill, to which Spicer replied, “There’s no camera on, Jim.”

“Maybe we should turn the cameras on, Sean,”responded Acosta. “Why don’t we turn the cameras on? They’re in the room. The lights are on.”

Spicer moved on but Acosta repeatedly interrupted the event by shouting virtually the same question over and over again, like a child attempting to gain the attention of an adult.

“Why are the cameras off, Sean? Why did you turn them off? Can you just give us an answer to that? Can you tell us why you turned the cameras off?”repeated Acosta. “It’s a legitimate question. You are a taxpayer-funded spokesman for the United States government. Can you at least give us an explanation for why the cameras are off?”

Spicer continued to ignore Acosta and repeatedly attempted to call on another reporter, Travis Yingst of One America News Network, who seemingly took it upon himself to put an end to the haranguing of Spicer by Acosta, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.

“Can we get this out of the way? Can we address the cameras issue?”Yingst asked.

“Yes, some days it will happen, some days it won’t,” replied Spicer matter-of-factly. “The president’s going to speak today in the Rose Garden, I want the president’s voice to carry the day. So, look, this is nothing inconsistent with what we’ve said since day one.”

This actually isn’t the first time that CNN’s Acosta has lost his cool regarding the increasing use of the new off-camera format for daily media briefings. He called Spicer “useless” last week, according to The Hill, and the network also sent a court sketch artist to a briefing Friday to provide a picture in place of the camera feed.

Acosta continued his temper tantrum regarding the off-camera briefings later during a report on CNN Monday, essentially lying to the anchor in that “Sean Spicer has refused to take questions from CNN for weeks now,”according to Breitbart, though he clarified a moment later that “he may have taken a question here or there, over the last couple of weeks.”

Nevertheless, he persisted, and claimed, “We’ve largely been just blackballed during these briefings,”and added, “We’re just not getting questions to the White House press secretary … That would not have happened in previous administrations.”

While this isn’t the first time Acosta has crossed the line from being an dutifully dogged reporter to an annoying peacock strutting for attention, his antics at the news conference on the heels of CNN’s embarrassing “fake news” debacle last week certainly don’t reflect well on the network. In fact, combined with Acosta’s whining remark afterward, they make CNN look like a floundering ship.

Perhaps if reporters would refrain from seeking their 15 seconds of fame or a viral YouTube clip during the daily media briefings, Spicer would have no problem keeping the cameras on every day.

But that simply hasn’t been the case, and whether there are cameras or even audio available at the daily briefing is entirely within the discretion of the White House. Acosta and the rest of the White House media pool may want to consider toning down their shenanigans and actually ask substantive questions instead of digging for “gotcha” moments on non-existent scandals every single day, as it has become truly tiresome.

Part of being the president is hosting all sorts of visitors to the White House. President Donald Trump appeared to have had a blast doing just that with a group of North Carolina students. The high-schoolers, preparing for a national rocketry competition, stopped by to show off their competition-winning rocket that they named after the president himself.

Trump and students from Victory Christian Center School in Charlotte met in the Oval Office on May 12 to discuss the Team America Rocketry Challenge.

“Guess what the name of the rocket is?”Trump said to gathered reporters. “It’s called ‘Trump.’”

“It better work well!” he joked to the students.

When Trump asked why they had named their rocket after him, one student replied, “Simply because it conquers all.”

The media did show the meeting in the Oval Office, albeit quite briefly, and most certainly didn’t dwell on it.

The media also didn’t dwell on another important fact: the students were minorities who had been saved from their wretched public schools by a special voucher program in North Carolina that helps low- and moderate-income families afford private school tuition, according toThe Charlotte Observer.

Trump has made it quite clear, both through his own words and the appointment ofBetsy DeVosto serve as Education Secretary, that he is in favor of voucher programs like the North Carolina Opportunity Scholarships and other programs like charter schools that help break up the failing public school monopolies that trap many low-income students in terrible schools that prevent them from fully realizing their full potential.

Further debunking the media narratives surrounding Trump, watch the video again and take note of how happy and excited most of the students appeared to be to meet with the president, despite constant suggestions from the media that Trump hates minorities and poor people.

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American Family Association
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The Alex Jones Show is a nationally syndicated news/talk show based out of Austin, TX. The show is syndicated by the Genesis Communication Network on over 60 AM and FM radio stations across the United States, and has a gained a large internet based audien

The REAL SIDE with Joe Messina
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Legal Insurrection
Legal Insurrection went live on October 12, 2008, originally at Google Blogger. We hit our one-millionth visit about 11.5 months later, our second million a few months after that, and since then readership and linkage from major websites have grown drama

The Last Refuge
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The REAL SIDE with Joe Messina
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